


chimeras in your eyes (they're just like mine)

by dollyfish



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Dark, Despair Era (Dangan Ronpa), F/F, Flashbacks, Necrophilia, Sexual Content, Unreliable Narrator, group suicide, non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-30 01:42:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13939854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollyfish/pseuds/dollyfish
Summary: After one was gone, one would replace them in seconds, cast one glance down at the pink-stained pavement and leap off the window.Faithful to her job, Mahiru documented it.Baby bird after baby bird after baby bird.





	chimeras in your eyes (they're just like mine)

**Author's Note:**

> wow. i... i seriously wrote this, didn't i. wow
> 
> i have no excuses to give you just get far, far away if you're sensible to certain themes, and do check the tags twice. this fic is not for the faint-hearted and was written as a character study that would finally satisfy my macabre and shippy imagination. i can only humbly hope i fleshed out mahiru and sato's relationship well enough.
> 
> now i'll go set myself on fire.

 

 

 **I wasn't composed/** **of broken bones or demon limbs/s** **o please watch over me/and be the light to carry me**

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Mahiru’s bright eyes fluttered open.

Sato lay by her side, presumably in her own beautiful world of dreams, and her raven hair was spread out around her head like a splendid halo. It made her look like a saint, or something a little holier. She stood out in the refreshing, bleached lighting that shone through a defective set of curtains from a nearby convenience store, the one just down the road; a lonely beam of light ran across the girl’s oval-shaped face like a rivulet of the purest water, an entrancing detail, like something out of a memory that simply isn’t a memory. A perfect summer day by the seaside, with gulls making noise overhead and a breeze making her skin taste like salt, and there are no blurred figures disturbing the background, nothing except the gulls and the breeze, nothing except Mahiru and Sato.

She decided it was worth a smile, she decided it was a memory. Now it was clear, Sato’s lovely little smile that always grew and grew into a tidal wave, overwhelming her and making even the glistening sea behind them seem obscure.

Mahiru traced the wild streak of sunlight with a trembling finger. She’d been afraid that it would vanish or evade her touch, because Sato’s expression just looked so divine, so pure and serene. Her nose was smooth and slightly pointy, just enough for Mahiru to compare her profile to that of models featured in magazine covers. The rest of her face, though, wasn’t like that. A bit of dried mascara had fallen on the high of her right cheek. That speck of black was not just a fake beauty mark, and Mahiru knew, despite herself, that maybe it was a artist’s eye, or more likely, that it was her rightful heritage after gazing at Sato for what amounted to years of silent and oblivious pining. Too long, all things considered.

Wasn’t it just natural for a middle school kid who had totally different things on her mind, and whose fantasies sounded infinitely more solid than the very skin that wrapped around her bones? Where would a kid even find the courage to do anything but wish big? Well, being in love was a pretty big deal.

If Mahiru could actually unwind the past and find that exact point in time, she would tell herself to love, love, love, love, love, love till her heart became old and tattered.

 

“Sato”, her chest was bursting with an emotion she wasn’t sure how to classify, so she cried out. How did she deserve this? “I can’t- I can’t believe you’re still mine, Sato…”

 

Loving her always hurt, but not in the way she expected it to.

As a kid, she was taught marriage was fidelity in its sublime and highest form. She thought she would want it once she grew up a little bit, and she started traveling the world- Once she became an independent woman much like her mother. Instead of her dreams or her body (which stayed more or less the same, with a few collateral changes, especially on the front), her heart underwent radical changes as she experienced the first love bites.

It wasn’t a pain she couldn’t endure, rather the root of nights sleepless and of that radio silence in her head. Then again, she wouldn’t really know the extent to which she could go for the person she held most dear until Hope’s Peak Academy. And everything that happened taught her more about it.

 

“Sato”, the photographer repeated, her breath slower and her voice softer. She pulled her hand close to her chest, a sudden feeling of strange unease flooding her. The ceiling seemed too low, was all that dust always up there?, the air in the flat much too smothering.

The window had been shut for weeks on end, this was definitely not an oversight on Mahiru’s part. One categorical rule was that the air from outside could not circulate inside the flat, lest the girl lying by her side get annoyed and urge Mahiru to do something about the inconvenience.

As she sat upright to survey her surroundings, she figured out what was wrong.

 

“I’m gunna get breakfast ready”, Mahiru announced, stretching her arms above her head like a sluggish cat. Sato traced the best comparisons, as if she had an endless stream of outlines and imagery floating through her mind. See, Mahiru loved photography with her whole self, and people had even evaluated her work in terms of _talent_ , but there were things her camera would never be able to capture.

 

She needed Sato like a raphaelite painter needed a visual reference. Not many choices, for that matter.

For example, a camera couldn’t portray exactly the odd, and oddly intelligent, oddly improper way Sato reasoned.

She walked out, not before casting a glance over her shoulder. Sato had the peaceful expression that reminded Mahiru of the (imaginary) gulls and the (imaginary) shore, and she had to force herself to make her way to the kitchen, because the girl’s dark hair would almost be moving with the (imaginary) breeze and permeate the air with the smell of the sea.

She did love pirate stories. Wasn’t this their promised neverland?

 

 

* * *

 

 

  
The Tragedy gave everything to Mahiru. What she had only dared to imagine, it was all happening in front of her very eyes, and she held up her camera.

Many and many fell to their death, splattering on the school grounds like baby birds whose wings aren’t strong enough, and many, many, many more. It felt like they expected to soar up in the sky and take flight above Mahiru’s head, when they threw their bodies over railings, out of rows and rows of shattered windows. They would not stop.

After one was gone, one would replace them in seconds, cast one glance down at the pink-stained pavement and leap off the window.

Faithful to her job, Mahiru documented it.

Baby bird after baby bird after baby bird.

There was nothing else she saw herself doing as a career. She got closer to the bodies, making sure to avoid getting crushed by the falling ones. Her camera snapped pictures of their open skulls, like fruit caskets someone had dropped on the floor. Bolts of electric agitation ran through her, a sort of enthusiasm that was completely new to her. So she kicked a body over and captured the tear-streaked face of a girl who held her phone close to her chest. A pack of gummy bears was sticking out of her cardigan pocket. Mahiru took it and put the sugared treat in her mouth, happily munching on it.

The girl had a pretty little crack in her head where her dark hair got all muddled, and blood was expanding under the photographer’s feet; she had probably been breathing not too long ago.

Some of them were sprawled on top of each other, groups of two or three. After a while, Mahiru stopped distinguishing their faces and she took pictures of their empty eyes, but also of their exquisite limbs, sometimes a whole with the pavement.

Bones cracked under her boots, and the sound made her giggle because it resembled to her ears the chirping of baby birds. Then her attention was attracted by the entrance of the school building, obstructed by only a few corpses here and there. The first floor had gone silent for a while now. No one came shouting or running at Mahiru, the flames had quieted down, and as she walked through the hallways she could not count how many the bodies were scattered in the dark.

And one moment she was trying to think of a way to get around the unfavorable lighting and the next she he knew exactly where she was. Perhaps she was always headed here, unknowingly.

The blackboard had offensive slurs and the name of the Ultimate Despair written on it, over and over. Some desks were dirty with fresh blood and the floor was a mess. But Mahiru’s gaze had found the one she was looking for; in the middle row, close to the window, one of the desks was whimsically orderly. Even when _she_ occupied it, there never seemed to be anything out of place. Mahiru stood next to it until she heard no more screams, no more laughter, and nothing alive remained of what was once the Reserve Course. Not a single poor bird managed to take flight.

Good grief.  
The Tragedy gave everything to Mahiru. She only had to go to the morgue and take back what was hers.

 

 

* * *

 

 

With the weight of two full cups of tea balanced in her hands, Mahiru returned. A speck of dust had barely moved since she was gone, but she didn’t let herself feel self-conscious.

Sato was waiting for her warmth.

Look at that sweet thing, all curled up on the bed sheets with the geometrical pattern she said she liked, the dictionary definition of a lazy Sunday morning. Mahiru wondered if she was feeling cold, her gaze hesitating on Sato’s bare feet. They probably were.

The light intruding on their love den only enhanced how pale and bright Sato really was, and as surprising as it felt to admit it, Mahiru felt a pang of something close to fury. It hissed from the inside, and she couldn’t stop it because she knew people had wronged Sato in the past. She couldn’t tell how many, but the telltale twitch of Sato’s mouth had something to do with the pressure her peers in the Reserve Course pushed each other under. Sato didn’t deserve it.

The distant look she etched into her features at times was imprinted in her mind. And the fights, all those damn fights. The photographer still remembered the dread of being neck deep in the middle of a fight between Kuzuryuu and Sato even all those times she wasn’t physically there because of course, _of course_ it must have happened and she was not guiltless.

No, Sato wasn’t either.

Setting the cups near Saito’s feet, Mahiru sighed and crawled between Sato’s legs. Under her fingertips they felt smooth, dainty, creamy, exactly like they did in each of her wild dreams. No, Mahiru couldn’t say to be some candid maiden, not for a long time now; her affection for Sato would never be denied or taken away ever again. Her cheeks flushed a dark shade of red and her hands halted in their tracks, resting unmoving on Sato’s full thighs.

Mahiru and Sato had made one too many promises to one another. They were promises under the guise of innocent jokes and gestures rather than verbal agreements, and each one was a soothing caress on Mahiru’s heart, from the most significant ones to the trivialities. Sato, after all, never made fun of the little mundane worries that afflicted Mahiru, like, say, was it right to take a picture from this angle? Would that object be better photographed from afar or up close?

  
The first night at their new flat was hard to describe. Words were not enough.

But the next, and the next, and the next, and the next. Mahiru felt as though she was living in a fairytale. She thought that Sato would agree, if she ever mustered up the courage to say something when Sato woke up. She was a little past the age of fairytales and princesses, wasn’t she?

Mahiru took a deep breath and her fingers traced the soft skin of Sato’s navel, idly playing with the hem of her shirt. It was the same one she wore the day of the Entrance Ceremony. Mahiru noticed that this particular made her wistful, so, despite not holding bad memories of Sato at all, she unbuttoned it and let it pool at her sides.

Sato’s stomach and chest looked as though a classical sculptor had chiseled them to perfection. From the meticulous balance of her breasts, not small at all but firm enough that Mahiru could cup them and feel their round plumpness, to the flexuous curves of her hips. Sato, ever-pale, abrasive like a summer storm, lay there quietly; her body could hold no secret. Mahiru was overwhelmed by the desire to kiss every inch she could reach, of her body inside and out.

She was being impatient. She needed to _behave_ a little. _Behave, Mahiru. Can you not be such a shameful girl, just this once._ A voice in her head, one in a million, put a momentary stop to the teasing movements of her palm.

Her red mouth went dry and her eyes two slits and and her entire body hot like a furnace. And then her muscles tensed and that expression surfaced again.

If Sato had woken up in that moment and looked up what she would have seen was hardly in the realm of possibility, and yet on Mahiru’s face was that look of total clarity, a haunting realization, and the unbridled joy Junko had taught her to feel.

Mahiru kissed Sato on the lips and for a long time, for _the longest time,_ this alone would have made the bullet hole sting less and less until she forgot she had been shot, but no breath was corresponding hers now and that _longest time_  actually felt lifetimes away.

Sato, obviously, didn’t wake up.

Not when Mahiru pushed down her own skirt, not when Mahiru pressed the flat of her tongue in the space between her breasts, not when Mahiru’s sighs started getting heavier, and certainly not when sweat trickled down her forehead, her body, their bodies, stitched together like two incomplete fragments that need to be joined to make sense. Every inch of contact with Sato was so intense that she couldn’t pull away without tearing off her own flesh and so real that- Wake up, wake up, wake up! _She won’t._ She won’t, will she, but in retrospect, except the smell of formaldehyde, her body was just as perfect as when they were virgins and Mahiru could love her enough for the both of them.

In sickness and in health, even when her eyes started to decay inside their orbits and her bones to shine through, wasn't this their true, sincere, promise?

Oh. Promises, promises.

The truth was, would always be, that Mahiru really didn’t blame Sato... So long as she’d be hers. Which meant forever forever forever.

 

Mahiru gave the girl beneath her a timid smile, then bent backwards to pick up the polaroid camera.

This one, she had taken it from an electronics store down the road, a procedure that nobody perceived as stealing anymore. (You steal lives, you steal food, you steal pills.) Mahiru simply took, took and took like one of those insatiable black holes up there, that would take what little remained of their miserable little playground. The empire they had built, crushing everything to ashes.

But for now, for now Sato’s body felt like coming home.

Little purple galaxies were embroidered in Sato’s cold arms and Mahiru captured each one of them like this was her religion, her holy mission.  


“Here we go. You did great, Sato”, she breathed out and checked out the last polaroids. “Mhh. You’re really pretty in this one.”

 

Much as she had been jealous of Sato’s heavenly beauty once (middle school did ugly things to little girls), Mahiru waited for her feverish heartbeat to die down before setting down the camera and the polaroids and turning her gaze up to the ceiling. Their sober room may not be the best one around, but it was aesthetically enough for a photographer, and it was theirs, and it served its purpose just alright, so there was not much to be said.

Multiple threads ran from one wall to the other creating a web of photographs, which Mahiru thought of as the only concrete proof of her talent to mean anything. She’d need to add the new entries somewhere but first she liked to ask Sato which ones came out better, as she earnestly wanted to avoid making her somewhat uncomfortable, and any changes to their bedroom should be discussed together.

She fell in love with summertime at eleven years of age and she fell in love with a girl for the same things. Even though they eventually drifted to different seashores, the sun would only ever rise in the morning for that girl, the girl who hung all the stars in the sky.

Mahiru lied down by Sato’s inert side and her warm muscles and tendons stretched like there wasn’t something terribly faulted and broken in her. She looked content to just observe Sato’s face in silence, and if she cried she would cry harder than ever. The room was painted gold for a little less than a minute and Sato's skin shone like alabaster. She let herself fall for this, the smell of sweat and salt and their golden, unending summertime.

And like a baby bird in love, swallowed by a pink-stained pavement, she fell.

 

 

 


End file.
